


blinking eyes encased in rust

by caes



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Character Study, Foreshadowing, Gen, Loyalty, Multi, Prophetic Dreams, Prophetic Visions, Psychic Abilities, Relationship Study, a slow repetitive train wreck with fire, psychic!armin, this is a train wreck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-24 01:41:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1586978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caes/pseuds/caes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Armin doesn’t think. (He knows)</em>
</p><p>Armin knows everything before it happens, but it's still not enough to make a difference and sometimes he wonders if it only hurts to try. Prophet is a label, or a title, just not the right one. (aka Armin can see the future and it's not pretty)</p>
            </blockquote>





	blinking eyes encased in rust

**Author's Note:**

> So I was watching snk for the first time, and it was the first episode when I said "wow. armin totally just told the future, didn't he. it went to hell _less than five seconds_ after he said it would. can he tell the future." [ In case you forgot.](http://static.tumblr.com/yekjxza/dQon5r7s4/image.jpg) But it turned out he didn't have any supernatural powers, and three months ago I was like whatever, writing it.  
> Tentative plans for a part two. I might want to rework this in the future since it's kind of incomprehensive.  
> Warning: this is very self-indulgent and I've stuffed it full of headcanons, subtle personal shipping, and references no one will understand. Also, I'm a very bad editor.  
> Title is from the song God & Satan by Biffy Clyro.

  **profétés ( _advocate_ )**

  **prophet**

+

He is born.

Eyes open, crawling skin, harsh light, bright colors, the world, he sees—

—dust, leaves, sound, laughter lines and crows feet, walls, things past, sunrise and all the things to come, mysteries, lies slipping off tongues, dripping red, the flame of a single candle, the dark, dark, everything is dark and where and why and who are you but more importantly who will you be, prophet—

—everything.

+

When Armin is three years old, a boy from down the street knocks him over.

It doesn’t hurt, not really, not enough to matter, but he pushes himself up on his scratched elbows and he can hear laughter; it’s nasty and it hits like a whip and he doesn’t like it at all, not one bit.

So he turns to the boy, who is four years older and has shaggy hair so long it brushes past his shoulders (and Armin knows he’s trying to look more like his dad) and screams, “You’re gonna break your arm!”

The words are full of fury and heat, and Armin clenches his tiny fists hopes the words will hit something, make his offender suffer, but he is met with only a laugh. The boy doesn’t believe, has no reason to trust this small child with a halo of gold hair and dirt on his knees. No reason in the world.

(Two weeks later, the boy falls out of the high branches of a sycamore tree, and then, _fallingfalling **crashing**_ , down and down, lands wrong on his elbow and— _crickcrack **snap!**_ —something goes wrong.)

(He was trying to prove he could climb higher than anyone else, that he could reach the sky.)

+

He is born in the night, the edge of dawn when the sunlight is preparing the rise over Wall Maria, golden rays beginning to melt the spidery thin frost on the windowpanes, and it is cold, and the room is lit by stubby candles that flutter like restless wings.

His mother looks down at him, his tiny red face and she holds him, and the doctor says, “What will you name him?”

He opens his eyes. Blue.

(Armin)

“Armin, I think.”

Armin doesn’t think. (He knows)

+

Five is a year of discovery and excitement and wiggling teeth.

Five is the year he realizes that something is missing.

He senses it, something troubling and nagging and he feels like there’s something absent inside of him, as if he’s lost a vital organ without realizing, bled out through a painless wound. And he looks out the window, at the entire world that he’s never seen. His eyebrows knit tightly and his fingers move over the glass, tracing invisible words. He doesn’t feel like a child of five, enjoying summer weather and thinking about the happy, trivial things he should think about. No. He feels old.

(As if he’s seen much more than anyone could fathom with their small, mortal minds.)

His parents find it strange when he expresses a sudden desire to explore. He goes on long walks from dawn to dusk. Nothing ever happens; he never finds whatever it is that he’s looking for, but day after infinite day the boy keeps searching with a shine in his blue eyes.

His mother is watching him on one of these days. He has stopped, eyes rapt, body tense and alert and he stares down a dark alleyway overgrown with ivy as if he's spotted something, and his mother is watching—how the setting sun illuminates his thick fringe of eyelashes, casting short shadows on his round cheeks—and his hair is the trickster-spun straw in the impossible stories he’s so fond of—and the conviction in his gaze is the power that has brought kings to their knees, nations to war and empires to crumbling dust.

He looks lost.

His mother thinks to ask, “Are you looking for something, Armin?”

The boy curves his lips in a crescent moon. “Someone.” (His best friend, to be exact.)

The idea had come to him in the flash of a dream—a boy: emerald eyes like stolen jewels—spirit like raging flames, spontaneous combustion—a will stronger than iron bars. Armin has to find him.

(His name is hunter.)

+

The girl queen’s mother pushes her away. Historia runs, hides under the covers. She tries to smile.

The huntress lets an arrow fly, small hands shaking from the effort and the force of her father’s gaze. Sasha thinks that life couldn’t get better, that she could stay here.

The soldier cleans the blood from his hands, digging under his nails as the walls and dark ceiling close in on him. Levi vows to escape.

The commander salutes, fist snapping up to his heart. His nails dig into his palms, but his mind is elsewhere. Erwin Smith is plotting.

Connie Springer smiles, Jean Kirstein laughs, Marco Bodt is happy.

(Things change.)

One day, his parents leave.

It had been hard, heart-wrenchingly difficult not to intervene. But he had forced himself to keep his eyes shut and his breathing steady when they pressed the last kisses to his forehead, and he listens to the sounds of the crickets as they shut the door. The sound is unendingly mindless and ceaseless and unaware, and so impossibly simple, and he wants to let himself melt into it and forget.

It happened like it happened. A boy, parents that leave, are gone like a dream in the morning, and tomorrow he will go to his grandfather and he will be unable to explain, simply vanished, and his best friend will look at him with eyes that have never tried to lie and he will say that it’s alright when it’s really not.

He waits until they’re gone before he cries. Worlds away, Mikasa Ackerman curls up between her parents to keep warm, and they circle themselves around her and it's a near perfect fit.

+

The world is—

—yellowing parchment, uneven edges, ribbons and markers, dog-eared corners, awkwardly heavy and bound in leather, sturdy but softened and worn on the spine, words written in blood ink and curled script, a language lost to human minds, cracked gold, carefully recorded events, fanning pages, a story—

—a book that Armin reads.

+

The prophet gives the hunter a knife.

The hunter is newly eight, the prophet, already so. They have known each other long enough that time doesn’t matter.

Eren looks at the blade—thick handle, one sided edge and round tip, forger's mark on the side, sharp and sturdy—and he doesn’t understand, doesn’t really want to. He doesn't want to. His head has been hurting more and more lately and his dad has been giving him more and more medicine and he doesn’t want to think about it, has fantasizes about greatness but never so much as entertained the idea that he might not be normal, and he doesn’t want to wonder why his best friend does these things and looks at him like he’s seeing a ghost and not a person.

“Just keep it, okay? Just keep it with you.” Armin eyes are sad, but when Eren tries to catch his gaze it’s like he’s not seeing, like he's somewhere else, _remembering_ something, not quite in this world but not ready for the next.

Eren has a scarf looped around his neck, a new one of maroon-y carmine, a little too big and a little too long, but shielding him from the chill and overhanging rain clouds. Carla had wrapped it around him that morning and said she wanted it to last.

(The knife is too small to mean what it does.)

+

He finds himself crying one day, suddenly; he wakes up shaking and out of breath, a deadly choking sensation in his throat that rolls up and bubbles like acid and thrashes against his tongue and teeth and he cries, sobs hard and heavy until it hurts, because there is _so much_  suffering and cruelty and pain, and _blood_ in the world, everywhere, on hands and hearts and roads, and it _hurts_ and he can't move and he _understands_ , he knows that it just goes on but why can’t he stop it, just a little bit, would that be too much to ask?

(The universe replies, preach little prophet, the end is near.)

(He has no idea what he was dreaming about.)

And a hundred million footsteps away—Annie Leonhardt puts on a ring, Bertolt Hoover picks up a knife and Reiner Braun braces himself, clenches his jaws and his bones and plants his feet and shuts his eyes, the three of them shut their eyes and they _**explode**_.

+

Armin isn’t surprised when Eren introduces his new sister. (Armin is never surprised.)

He smiles at Mikasa because he knows she needs it and tries to decide who—what she is. Her eyes are deep, dark, lost—tumbling clouds during a thunderstorm, the instant before lightning breaks the sky. She clings tightly to Eren’s hand, shivers as if she's cold. The girl is thin and hollow, and Armin worries that she might blow away in the breeze, but he sees her stance, the way her feet are placed side by side and he decides not to worry for her even if her knees are knocking. There's something in the movement of her hands that makes him think of the firewater in his books, flowing, trapped in mountains but ready to explode.

( _The protector_ , he decides.)

Beyond the walls, Levi tastes freedom for the first time, vows that he will never be trapped again. Reiner and Marcel share a joke while Bertolt laughs. Annie and her father fight, fists meet fists as they push each other, and he speaks things that will stay with her forever. Ymir is lost, her world drowned in endless pain and confusion and regret, and she wants a second chance.

Mikasa Ackerman is bound by the red string of fate.

(Although, a scarf is close enough to a noose.)

+

—his words come out in a shuddering shaking stutter, shattered, frail as a bird's bones but his mind is five minutes away, a step to the left and outside the walls, underwater, and in the trees but there is the sound of words and laughter, the laughter and the mocking is always there but it’s not his fault that he sees these things, it’s not his fault that he looks at flowers and sees poison and death, it’s not his fault that he looks at walls and sees cages and ruins, it’s not his fault that he looks in the mirror and only sees blood, and eyes, drowning eyes that aren’t his they _can’t_ be—

(Blood. It all ends in blood.)

+

Mikasa grows into her role every day. There is a fierceness in her eyes, slow lava moving through her veins whenever she throws a punch, land forming when she refuses to budge. People see how she holds herself, like she’s in the middle of battle, sizing up her prey, eyes like she’s staring down the barrel of a gun. Mikasa is sure of herself; she knows who she is and what she wants and what she has to do, and sometimes Armin envies that her life could be so clear. Still, she has to be watched. Mikasa is a million different paths, trails of yarn from an unraveling scarf that tangled and go in different directions, leading to different places.

Power isn’t always a good thing.

(Because power is an illusion that can _flickerflicker **fade**_ in and instant.)

+

“C’mon Armin! The Survey Corps is leaving!”

Eren’s face is full of childish, careless delight. His body is charged with energy, and he bounces on the balls of his feet, Mikasa standing still as a statue next to him. Armin follows.

He follows an awful lot, but he’s okay with that. Everything is movement.

They’re ten. Eren has been waiting for this day. Armin has been dreading it.

As the Survey Corps passes, green capes and carts and hooves against cobblestone— _clip-clop-clip-clop_ —Armin averts his eyes. Like it’s a funeral march. He feels a hand on his shoulder—Mikasa. Her touch is tender, warm. Armin thinks of a hearth in a home, somewhere, the sound of twigs snapping and sparks that flicker into warmth and smoke. “What’s wrong?”

He looks at Eren, whose jaw has dropped in awe, and at the soldiers, and the people who have gathered to watch. He considers telling her. What would happen, he thinks, if he simply said there are skeletons riding skeleton horses and cold blood soaking into the dirt, left in the tracks of the wagon wheels and making patterns in the cracks of the road. He shakes his head.

“It’s just… Eren wants to join the Survey Corps.”

Mikasa’s grip tightens. Kindle is thrown into the flames. "Yeah. I know."

+

The titans come too quickly.

Armin’s known it for months, years maybe, but they come too soon. He’s never been able to grasp it, not completely, just vague impressions and nausea when he runs. Maybe because there was always a chance. They were just kids, after all.

(He’s been dreaming about it his whole life, every time he looks at the horizon, whenever he breathes he can hear the screams.)

But he doesn’t know it until it happens; he feels his lips moving on their own accord, black ink pulled out of him and leaking into the air, over the pages of stories and he wants to scream no, stop, please. But security is fleeting and power is and illusion and he can't hide forever.

( _the walls can’t hold forever. only a matter of time._ )

It’s afternoon, and the sun is setting over Wall Maria but the walls won’t protect them forever.

It’s St. Maria’s last offering—a lesson and a reminder: you can’t trust anything, including yourself.

(He could never save them.)

(Sasha is with her father, Jean is getting into a fight, Historia is crying in the dark of a closet, Ymir is hungry, trying to find her way, Connie isn’t good enough, Eren is breaking to pieces and Mikasa is unraveling and fire and fear is eating them and Annie is _screaming_.)

Armin will never tell anyone, but—

—today, now, knives, willpower and the walls and good luck, do your job, this is your duty, go, they say you must go, it’s funny, isn’t it?, the whole world is your enemy, the world is so small, people and the insignificant little lives, humans, monsters, titans, a job, run now, see them scream, all things must end and all empires must fall, we’re warriors, this is a mission, you must complete the mission, we will become warriors, it hurts but it’s worth it, pain will pass, there’s no going back (but i want to, i’m scared and i want to go home)—

—they were just children.

+

Eren is filled with a different resolve now, anger and pain. Betrayal. Armin wishes there were something he can do. Wishes he could find the right words. (But he can never change it, he’s not strong enough, he never is.)

Before his grandfather leaves, he places his hat on Armin’s head and hugs him tightly. He promises to come back.

“No,” he whispers, shoulders beginning to shake. “Please, don’t lie. Please.”

(Please is the most useless word, he thinks.)

At least he said goodbye.

+

They’re hungry. A meal is bread and a shrunken apple; Armin’s ribs make him think of skeletons and skeleton horses and Eren faints when he pushes himself too hard. He gets back up again. Armin isn’t sure what he’s trying to accomplish.

Sometimes he thinks Eren is the king of the coal, lost causes and five-second plans, doomed to failure but never giving up. Perhaps ignoring failure. Perhaps sensing victory farther down the road.

Food is split in three, but they have to stop Mikasa from giving her share to them. (Mikasa is a giver. She gives and she gives and she don’t know when to stop. She can’t. And Armin worries that she’ll give her heart and her soul and her time and her life until there’s nothing at all but a carmine noose flying in the wind.)

It’s hard to look into each others eyes as they grow hollow and desperate, empty husks and dried roses.

The three of them curl up sometimes—

—dreams of bodies hitting the ground, a knife that flies over and over again, paralysis, of warmth and a home, of crushed buildings, of lies and promises and secrets, of bones; last words, of a horrible bloody smile that opens and closes and send entrails flying, feeling helpless and alone and weak, so weak because they couldn’t do anything, and everyone has left and they’re alone, a room, and a glowing syringe and a key and a lock and a key and _it hurts_ , it hurts it hurts _it hurts make it **stop**_ —

—because they only have each other.

+

They sign up for the Trainee Corps after Eren turns thirteen. Armin and Mikasa waited because of him, because they didn’t want to separated. Eren had been annoyed, but Armin could tell he was secretly grateful. Mikasa could tell too.

(One thing about Eren Jaeger is that he will never admit that he’s scared, but sometimes he doesn’t have to.)

Before they go to apply (any admission forms are due on the first of each month; new units of trainees are taken away every six), Mikasa pulls Armin aside. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she says, urgently, and it’s obvious that she knows the answer and is hoping against hope.

He forces the shaking out of his voice and meets her grey thunder eyes. “Yes. You’re going, aren’t you?”

“I have to go. I have to protect Eren.”

“But do you want to go?” _I have to protect Eren_. It’s just like he predicted, all that time ago. He feels vaguely ashamed, maybe a touch proud. (Mikasa is a giver.)

He has his own reasons. He’s going to join the Survey Corps because he needs to. He needs to make it stop, fix all the wrong, and he sometimes sees himself, a little bit older and a little bit harder, and he knows that Erwin Smith has plans and mixed intentions and that Levi will suffer enough for a hundred men (enough pain for all the men he couldn’t save) and that Petra Ral is nearing graduation and Hange Zoe is hunting the titans with feverish fervor light in their eyes and—

There’s no question about it. He has to go.

(Blood. It all ends in blood.)

Besides that, he gets chills down his spine when they hand in their forms.

(Jean was here a two weeks ago, Marco a month and while Reiner and Bertolt came together, Annie filled her form quietly and privately, regret leaking into her words. Connie will give his family the news tonight, and Sasha will never tell her father, leaving nothing but an empty room and an unstrung bow and a note. The girl called Christa Lenz had to scribble out an _~~His~~_ at the top of her form, still unused to her new name and tomorrow Ymir will overhear a conversation between priests, and she will start her search.)

The pieces are falling into place.

+

When he meets the 104th trainee squad, everything suddenly feels right. He knows these people—their faces and tastes and mannerisms, their secrets, and even as Shadis screams and sends spit flying in their faces Armin can’t help but feel optimistic. It’s been getting stronger, he thinks, the things he see are sharper and more striking and he gets the strangest details—bitemarks and horses and smoke and numbers—but he can feel that the next few years, at least, will be good to them.

Most of them.

+

(Ymir meets Christa, light and dark protected by lies, and a prayer circle calls to the saints for mercy, and monsters are desperate and hungry things, these are the things that the world has made and they are both queens in their own right—the rulers, idols, pariahs—of warring lands, and this can never end well.)

+

“Why are you following me?” she says, one night when she’s sneaking out of the cabins just for the feeling of being alone and she turns and sees a boy with hair like golden straw.

He’s standing in the shadows of spruce trees. It’s the dead of night, moon somewhere between waxing and waning behind the thin clouds and the cold is sharp. The boy shrugs. He’s thin, and Annie is reminded of vines and budding leaves in springtime, of birds. He isn’t dressed warmly enough for the cold, but he doesn’t shiver like she does. “I was just curious.” He makes a vague gesture with his hands.

His eyes glint with amusement, as though this is a game and she is the lucky card he has bet his play on, or an ace his opponent has just pulled from their sleeve. The boy curves his lips in a crescent moon—a scythe. It flickers.

A sound comes from him that's like a whistle or a song.

They stay there for so long that Annie loses the feeling in her knees, and her hands grow cold and her hood is down and her cheeks sting and the wind is blowing their hair in their eyes. (His eyes are strange—a mix of streaky colors, shifting with the light and drawing her in, pushing her away, like she’s going to fall.)

“You hate this, don’t you, Annie? You hate pretending.”

“I wouldn’t know what you mean.”

(Tomorrow she’ll remember that his name is Armin; she’ll hear it during roll call and he will salute and his voice will crack and his fist will snap up to hit his willowy chest and rock his precarious frame and it will raise the hair on her neck, like ice closing up around her, and she won’t speak to him and he won’t speak to her and they will pretend that whatever happened didn’t happen, because they both excel a pretending, even if they hate it.)

+

The prophet lies awake at night, because sleep never comes easily and if it does it's never peaceful. He can’t remember a time when he didn’t dream.

The ceiling is close enough that he could touch it if he tried, if he stood and stretched himself, and below him he can hear Eren’s snoring and shuffling (he's always been restless, a fighter even in the midst of sleep), and Reiner’s breath rocks the entire room and Jean mutters quietly, fitfully, and all the sounds blend together in a strangely harmonious mix of air and life. Armin’s next to a window, cold radiating from the glass. Not far away is the girl’s cabin with a candle in the window burned almost to the wick. He listens to air as it moves through bodies.

There are—

— _i am normal, this is natural, we are friends, i am human, my name is christa lenz, i don’t love her, i don’t care about them, this time i won’t make mistakes, i am a warrior, i am a soldier, i am not a monster, i am good, i don’t care about them, it’s just an act, i can be good, it’s not my fault, he’ll notice, someday, i don’t care what they think, i am strong, i am brave, i am not ashamed, this is who i am, **i’m telling the truth**_ —

—so many _lies_ here.

+

Sometimes he knows things, things he doesn’t remember reading or even dreaming about, but knowledge as simple as light and dark (although, light and dark are opposites but cannot exist alone, can be strong or weak or in perfect balance, _clarus obscurus_ , and how it that simple?) and as easy as breathing. It makes him wonder about fate and destiny—dangerous things. Things he doesn’t like to believe are real.

In the olden days, before walls and giants, time so long ago that even books can barely remember, people traveled for days and miles and lifetimes to visit their—prophets and augurs and diviners and clairvoyants—seers with bowls of reflecting oil and oracles with their heavy words and clouded eyes—soothsayers and sages—cards laid and shuffled a flipped and turned, dealt again—incense curling and clogging, breathed in and exhaled silently—broken bones thrown and dreams explained, foretold.

They used to make sacrifices.

(Sometimes he thinks he could do terrible things, if he wanted to.)

+

"I'm Christa Lenz," she says, eyes bright and hair gold and smile pleasant and pink, cheeks dimpled—and Armin blinks and—

—sees her running toward monsters as a castle falls down around her, toppling, sees a crown on her head and a cape around her shoulders, dragging, sees a knife pressed to her throat, caressing.

But he blinks again and she's just a girl. Just a mortal girl with eyes like the sky. Sunrise.

(Years later he sees her—another her, with a name that means past and stories and everything yet to come, and he understands.)

+

(Reiner and Bertolt stay together, side by side, as necessary as air because they’re holding on to the same cliff, but Annie is the wolf who had the gall—or maybe decency—to wear a black sheepskin, and it’s hard to understand how they can be so entwined yet separate.)

+

Armin knows he’s not strong; he’s never been strong.

He falls, scuffs his knees and splits his palms and bites his tongue against the sting. He wants to be angry. But he keeps trying, because that’s all he has, really. Despite everything, all the knowing and the dreams and the subtle way people's eyebrows move and their lips twitch, smiles of different kinds, he’s the only person he doesn’t understand.

Armin Arlert could control everyone, if he wanted to, except for himself.

He watches Mikasa excel—he’s proud of her, but worried (so much power, bubbling and boiling and threatening to overflow, ready to _flickerflicker **fade**_ )—and he watches Eren clear his own path.

He always _was_ a fighter.

Eren is something of a joke among the trainees, a novelty and a running gag ever since the first day when he announced that the titans better watch out, because he was going to kill every single one of their sorry, dickless asses with his bare hands (Eren’s words), or maybe just with his teeth and colorful insults.

(It doesn’t happen like that. It happens with a wounded, animal scream—a warcry—and anger, and pain, and blood. It all ends in blood.)

Armin is wary of it—all this pent up rage, constant flying sparks that only need a puff of the right wind to become an inferno. But he knows what to do. He kindles it.

“What do you think the outside world is like?”

“I wonder how far the ocean goes. Forever, maybe.”

“We’ll have to make sacrifices.”

“This is a cage, Eren.”

“You’re strong, Eren. I believe in you.”

(And he does.)

Sometimes he think Eren is a work of art—something Armin and Eren and Mikasa and his father and mother and everyone else chipped over painstaking months and years out of stone and steel, with their needles and knives and stories and their bare hands, skin rubbed thin and raw with the effort until he’s become something, some sort of symbol or monument or statue but Armin’s not sure what it’s a statue of, because maybe it’s not finished yet.

+

(Sasha makes Connie laugh, and she likes his smile and he likes the rough in her hands and she likes the scratches on his knees and today she doesn’t die, and he won’t tomorrow, and yesterday they were still together and they’re really just dancing around fate's fingers, through death's arms, because more than anything the both of them can run.)

+

Most nights, someone in their cabin cries—

—dreams of—(nightmares)

—and Armin never does a thing to stop it.

+

It’s getting worse. Stronger. More vivid. He has trouble, sometimes, telling what’s real and what’s not starts daydreaming and losing himself more frequently, and he starts to see more than what is—there’s what happened and happens and will happen, _won’t_ happen, _might_ happen, _could_ happen but _shouldn’t_ happes and how to _make_ it happen, _goinggoing **gone**_. Every night and every day—

—teeth, teeth and giants and white teeth and a dark tunnel with the sky coming down, breaking into pieces, the die is cast, fight, fight, _fight_ and _fight until you can’t anymore_ , ashes in the air, floating like snow and the leaves fall from the trees, dry brown husks that crackle under the feet of monsters, smiling monsters with teeth and hands and eyes and there is laughter, relief and fear and exhaustion and shame finally set free and it all comes in broken images, a cracked looking glass and he is _fallingfalling **crashing**_ , down and down and **down** and he’s going to crash, he knows it, he is falling through something that isn’t the sky and isn’t air and he think he might be drowning, he can feel something coming and these plans and these words and this story aren’t his, this life isn't his, and he has no control, he has nothing, he is _powerless_ —

—he dreams, and he understands less and less.

But he understands this. Armin doesn’t just _see_ anymore, (he’s not a pretty songbird locked in a cage; the door has opened and he has to decide if he’ll fly out) he _plans_. He pulls strings, ruffles feather, becomes both the angel and the devil on their shoulders. He knows something big is coming.

A to B to C to E to not quite Z, one plus one equals two equals three minus one, spring to summer to fall and the ground freezes, death and rebirth, years go by and the earth turns.

(Armin could destroy the world, if he wanted to.)

+

(Jean and Marco are friends, best friends but they don’t really know each other, but they believe in each other and that what’s necessary, there are things they'll never say and things that they try to say, and everything always works out until it doesn’t, until you’re just sad and broken and lost, and the reality is that you’re alone but it's always been that way and you were just ignoring it.)

+

He falls during training one day. He aims his gear wrong and the grapple snaps through a weak branch, twisting and jerking, and the momentum sends him into a tree trunk and earns him a bruise and a shallow scratch on his cheek.

He remembers a day, eternity ago, when falling made him angry.

But he shakes it off. He ignores the pain and swelling of his cheek, and he shoots off again, winds slicing through his hair and watering his eyes. He’s fallen behind. He has to fix that. Ahead, he can hear the echo of laughter, see the shapes of people swinging as their grapples hurtle through the forest. He has more important things to deal with, things bigger than his own mortality.

+

( _from the back of the head to the nape of the neck. one meter vertically, ten centimeters horizontally._ )

Two swords, grip tight and sweaty, knuckles white and blood rushing, eyes on the target, knives flashing and sun reflecting, brace yourself, be ready, **aim** —

He feels something, a tiny twinge somewhere in his cerebral cortex, words nudging against his teeth and asking to be spoken, a prophecy, and he as the impression that he’ll be getting used to this.

( _as long as i avoid the middle it won’t be fatal._ )

( _it’s just going to hurt a bit._ )

+

Reiner and Bertolt and Annie and Jean and Marco and Sasha and Connie (Christa never says anything he can trust, Ymir has other plans) all say they’re joining to Military Police.

Armin shakes his head and tries not to laugh.

(It’s harder to not cry, but he manages.)

(How will he do it, how will he make it happen? Sometimes it takes time and planning, sometimes an instant. How to make them believe? How to make them join the Survey Corps? It’ll take a sacrifice, any way. The people of olden days and stories used to make sacrifices and ask prophets to appease their gods.)

+

The years pass quickly, and suddenly it’s time to graduate and they’re taking final exams and Armin’s dreams are clouded with indecision.

That big thing—that thing he’s been dreaming about ever since Wall Maria fell, he still can’t tell what it is, but he knows it’s close.

He isn’t surprised when Eren and Mikasa make top ten. He isn’t surprised that Mikasa is number one, though he has to laugh at Eren’s look of triumph when he finds out he beat Jean.

Eren grabs Mikasa and Armin both and crushes them in a hug. It’s awkward, different than it used to be because they’ve all grow differently and they don’t fit together the same way anymore—Mikasa is taught muscle and callouses and sturdier than them both, but her embrace is softer than it’s ever been; Eren is angles and steady energy and his arms only go halfway around; Armin is still smaller and his head rests against Mikasa’s shoulder, but he squeezes them will all his might, breathes.

“This is it,” Eren whispers into Mikasa’s scarf. “We’re really doing it.” His smile is like the sun, and his eyes shine with that childish delight that's never really gone away. Armin likes that about Eren.

The three of them have been together so long, and something he wishes he didn't remember anything else.

Armin just nods, and it’s one of those rare moments when his vision is straightforward, clear, blackness and silence; all there is and here and now and this, and it is perfect.

—but perfection doesn’t last, perfection is always ruined or proved wrong and everything he sees is clouded and insubstantial and tainted and he starts to realize that something big is coming, someone is making a choice and the choice will destroy them all, and people are monsters and ashes under their skin and Armin is bleeding out—

(Blood. It all ends in blood.)

+

(Eren and Mikasa and Armin have been together for so long it doesn’t matter whether or not they try to count, like trees that have grown with branches tangling, and they know things about each other that others don’t, things they don’t know about themselves, but in a strange way they will never fit, never be perfect, leaves pressed against branches and roots tangling, and a day will come when they'll be apart and then they'll never be together again.)

+

The world is—

—weak, broken, shattered, eaten and bruised by millennia, stars spread over a universe, black holes devouring suns, blooming, stubborn, fighting, a slap across the cheek and a fist like an avalanche and a whip like a darting snake, moments between moments upon moments, _his fault_ , cruel, merciless—

—destined.

+

“So,” Armin says, not pretending to be conversational because he rarely has to pretend with Mikasa, “Eren’s joining the Survey Corps.”

It’s one of those times when Mikasa looks truly angry, when the volcano simmers up slowly and throws molten rock into the sky. He wrath is currently focused on the stack of crates they’re supposed to be moving. She picks one up with more ease than should be possible, expression murderous as she grunts under its weight. Armin grabs the other side and contributes what little he can.

“I’ve tried to convince him.” Her tone is bitter and biting; her teeth clench. “I’ve tried, but he won’t _listen_.” She heaves the crate out of Armin’s arms with a sudden burst of strength and stomps off with it. “He’s so _stubborn!_ ”

Armin decides not to point out that they’re both stubborn, and that’s exactly why they clash so much. He pretends not to see the tears pricking at the edge of her eyes.

He sits down on a crate of gear and looks at the horizon. He imagines he can see a thin line that might be Wall Maria in the distance. A few other trainees—almost graduates—are nearby. Reiner is teasing Christa while Ymir threatens him. Annie has settled for pushing the crates and sliding them slowly.

“So what will you do about it?”

Mikasa drops the crate unceremoniously, and Armin winces at the sound of something clattering. She pulls at her scarf uncomfortably against the heat, and he wonders if it chokes her. She joins him on the crate. "You should join the Garrison, Armin. You could be happy. Safe.”

“Mikasa...” He doesn’t know what to say. He knows Mikasa will follow Eren anywhere, but that’s just because he knows Mikasa, not because of dreams and flashes. He’s been getting headaches in the last week, and the things he sees are insubstantial and constantly changing.

From what little experience he has, that means no one has plans, and that’s always a direct path to chaos.

He knows what Mikasa wants. Mikasa thinks about houses, small and snug with fire flickering and candles at night, long summers and quiet winters, safety and sleep. He takes a breath, in and out slowly. The air is clear up here.

“Mikasa, what do—”

( _What do you want_ , because that’s the question no one ever asks.)

But then he stops, and he feels it, he knows it, the big thing that’s been a frothing cauldron of horror and nightmares finally boiling over. He wants to turn but his limbs won’t move and he feels like the toy soldier from the stories that he used to love so much, balanced on one leg and prepared to tip, to go _fallingfalling **crashing**_ , down and down and **_down_** into the waiting flames and toward the ground, and he can hear himself screaming inside, and the sky flashes **green** and _lightning_ and **smoke** and _steam_ , insubstantial.

(Three years later, but they’re still just children.)

+

A flash of lightning, green and yellow and a million other shades, clouds billowing in the sky, and he can hear a scream before it starts.

+

"It's a golden opportunity," Eren says, and smiles, because Eren is always the optimist and everyone's always taught him to hope, to keep going and push until it hurts, _harder_ if it hurts (when—it's all inevitable), to never admit that he’s scared when he’s terrified.

Sometimes Armin hates himself, himself and every other damn person for what they've done to him; they found a block of unformed metal and iron bars and they've twisted him into a statue, made him what they all need to be without him ever noticing, and Armin wonders how it's possible that the boy he sees now is that same boy he was looking for ten years ago, when things were simpler and life was a storybook and he called himself a prophet.

Armin hates himself, sometimes.

(They're teaching him to become hope, for everyone—humanity and maybe even the titans. And something is moving under his skin, a beast lying in the wait, ready to be triggered and ready to **explode** —and it ends with a warcry.)

"Sounds great," Armin says, and smiles, because he has a job to do. He's always followed, but he's okay with that. They all have their roles to play. As long as he doesn’t get left behind. "I'm with you all the way."

(And he means it.)

+

( **KILL** )

Eren Jaeger has the eyes of a monster, the eyes of a hunter. The prophet doesn’t know why he hasn’t seen it before, wonders what _else_ he hasn’t seen, wants to scream in horror and laugh at his stupidity but can’t, everything is falling down on top of him and he’s going to be crushed under the wreckage—

—but it’s not his fault that he sees these things, it’s not his fault that he looks at flowers and sees poison and death, it’s not his fault that he looks at walls and sees cages and ruins, it’s not his fault that he looks in the mirror and only sees blood, and _eyes_ , drowning _eyes_ that aren’t his they _can’t_ be—

—and he looks at humans and sees monsters.

+

Armin sees the past and the future and everything that’s happening now, speaks the truth and the lies because it the only thing he can control, feels the echoes in his bones—not real words in any real language but the implication is clear— _prophet, prophet_ , reverberating through his skull and his teeth and he hates the sound of the word for what it means and doesn’t mean because it isn’t enough, words he knows and hears and words he speaks, the words are never _enough_ , _prophet, prophet_ , and he clenches his jaw against it, tries to banish the tears blurring his vision, but he thinks he’s going to collapse.

( _why can't i move?_ )

Three years later, days and nights and Bertolt doesn’t speak, hates the sound of his voice and hates himself and hates the things he's done, hates and tries to be small, tries to hold on to memories of innocence, but everything’s different now and there’s fire and steam still trapped under his skin and lightning ripping his heart, and he worries about Reiner, who has a big voice and sometimes smiles wrong and laughs like bloody pain and wrath, and sometimes in the dark he wonders about the armor that wraps around and shelters him because it’s too tight, constricting and shrinking, or maybe he’s growing, but anyway it's squeezing and crushing and his ribs are a cage, and Annie keeps a ring in her pocket and her hand in a fist and hears voices—screams and her father and sobs, _i’m sorry i’m sorry_ , and she clenches her fists, fights because she doesn’t know what else to do, loathes and loves and longs for what she can’t have.

Bertolt made a choice again, the same choice from three years ago but just like last time he didn’t understand (he was crying inside) and Reiner is waiting (but he doesn’t want to) and Annie is closing in, folding and collapsing (she wants to leave life behind).

+

(Where’s Eren?)

"Gone," he whispers, and his voice is a broken thing, and no one hears. A leg, an arm, a life for a life. Armin wants to laugh, but it gets stuck. His throat hurts from screaming. Mikasa has hair like volcanic ash.

It rains. Water falls down and slips and soaks into the ground.

Armin looks into broken knives; sees his reflection and sees blood.

He doesn't know when he's going to die. Today, maybe. Maybe he's already dead and he never realized before. Or maybe he's been ignoring it.

Somewhere else, people run, and so do monsters.

There’s no way out.

Worlds away, a god of death laughs.

(Blood. It all ends in blood.)

+

**Author's Note:**

> I know for certain that someone  
>  Is watching but is it from up or down?  
>  I make you miserable you stick with me  
>  Although you know I'm gonna  
>  [Ruin your life](http://youtube.com/watch?v=RAtacHPAHLI&feature=kp)  
> 


End file.
